Monday, June 20, 2005

Corporate Responsibility Part II

This is the second part in my series on Corporate Responsibility. Ooooh! How clever of me!. Bob Rosner replied to the first part. Here is his reply"Amen. The good thing about this article was realizing how many peopleout there agree with us. That was inspiring to me. Thanks for sharingyour thoughts. Now that you've written, don't be a stranger. Cheers.Bob"

All this sounds fine and dandy. The real shocker however came when I read this post by Carl Pope. He brings to light some alarming facts about Exxon Mobil. Every company has the right to worry about its bottom line. But, when one company tries to systematically discredit scientists, science and the obvious effects of Global Warming, it is stepping out of bounds.

One thing is for sure, I am never stepping into an Exxon Mobil gas pump. Like Thomas points out, it is difficult not to buy Exxon Mobil products. Apparently, oil companies share pipelines and depots. But we have to start somewhere. We have to take that first step.

I evaluated my retirement portfolios. Thankfully, I didn't have Exxon Mobil in them. But I did have some other oil companies. I chucked them. It is my firm belief...If we as share holders, refuse to invest in socially irresponsible corporations, we are sure to see better corporate citizenship

Switching to eco investing...

Weird moment of the dayI don't smoke. For some weird reason, I stood around with a bunch of smokers today all the while drinking chocolate milk!

2 comments:

In strictly historical terms, Populism refers to a third-party movement that materialized in America in the 1890s, generating a spirited energy that also caused a certain alarm near the seats of the mighty. The Populists engaged in a social analysis of contemporary American society that yielded a range of proposed economic reforms. Foremost among them was the Subtreasury Land and Loan System, which reconceptualized American banking and proposed a restructured monetary system that would fundamentally alter the power relationships between bankers and everyone else. The Populist concern about "concentrated capital" extended beyond banks to include large-scale business organizations generally. Populist reformers felt that business domination of the political process—through massive campaign contributions to friendly officeholders and persistently effective lobbying in the national Congress and the state legislatures—had proceeded to the point that the practice had begun to undermine the democratic idea itself.